


BBC Mary and BTVS Spike: Dark, Dangerous, Complex

by VioletHuntress



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, some simplification of the buffyverse in order to make my points
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-12 00:05:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1179539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VioletHuntress/pseuds/VioletHuntress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary Morstan in series 3 of Sherlock may be compared to Spike in BTVS: a complex character who is neither a hero nor a villain, but a mix of 'good' and 'bad' characteristics and in love with one of our main characters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	BBC Mary and BTVS Spike: Dark, Dangerous, Complex

**Author's Note:**

> I want to state clearly: in no way am I arguing that Mary actually doesn’t have a soul or is not human. ONLY in the btvs sense of a vampire-with-a-soul does she not have “a soul.” Mary is clearly human and she may have the capacity to feel remorse for harming others or she may not, but at this point in time she doesn’t seem to feel it; whereas the vampire-with-a-soul feels overwhelming remorse (to the point of losing their sanity). All I mean is that she is not at that point in the schema right now.

  * _For twotwoonebeemine, who requested Buffy. With love :)_

  


If someone were holding a gun to your head, insisting that you shoot an innocent person or they will kill you, do you do it?

This is a horrible dilemma, but ethically, the question we need to ask is: is your life more valuable than this other person’s? Do you have a right to take someone else’s life—a purely innocent bystander, to save your own? Ethically, most people would say no—you do not have that right. But these are very murky waters.

Now, get rid of the gun to your head. Is there any justification to take an innocent life (even in war, were there are rules about enemy combatants)? No. If a person is not an immediate threat, then there is no justification to kill, to snuff out another human’s spirit and future against their will. If we want to talk about good vs bad, the side of the angels vs the ‘dark’ side, we have to start here, don’t we?

Here’s the thing about Mary—she shot Sherlock. She killed him. And she threatened his life again. She felt regret, hesitation, conflict… Good. She is not a moustache-twirling villain. But seeing her conflict and hesitation doesn’t lead me to think it makes sense that sherlock forgave her. In fact, if it isn’t part of some long game, it seems incredibly reckless.

In order to analyse Mary’s character a bit more deeply, I want to take a detour through Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Specifically: Spike. My argument: Mary is Spike with the love, but without the chip, and without the “soul.”

One of the things I love about BTVS is the way it explored complex moral questions, despite it basically being a campy show about a vampire slayer and demon hunter. One of the premises of the show was that demons are pure evil and can be killed without moral repercussions. Fine—I can accept that.* BTVS is very serious about taking human life: to the point where as soon as someone kills a human, even in this great battle of good and evil that Buffy is involved in, they are considered to have ‘gone rogue’ and are treated as dangerous.

_* I’ve had arguments with people about accepting that, people who have argued that ANY killing without moral repercussions is impossible, even if there are made-up ‘demons,’ because it’s always possible to imagine that the demons are ______ people who are dehumanized. I don’t really agree: I think that demons are very deliberately differentiated in BTVS from ANY human life, and we’re just meant to take them as a given, which I do._

BTVS went on to complicate the picture of what it meant to be human vs demon, first in the simple case of Angel, and then in the more complex case of Spike. With Angel, it was clear: he was a demon whose “soul” was restored to him. The idea of a soul in Buffy is pretty difficult to fully decipher, but for me, the “soul” in BTVS is roughly equivalent to the difference between sociopath/psychopath in casual language (and maybe in _Sherlock?_ ) and typical people. Having a soul, in BTVS, gives you the _capacity_ , at the very least, to feel remorse. It’s posited in BTVS that a demon without a soul can never be an ethical being because they literally cannot care about harming others—they operate solely (no pun intended!) on a predator-prey basis. Even if they wanted to feel bad about their kills they couldn’t—they don’t have that capacity.

With Angel, we get “good Angel” = Angel with a soul, which means that even though he is still a demon, and therefore has the predator-prey instinct—the desire to kill—he _can_ (and does) override it with his sense of right and wrong. He _can_ stop himself from killing, because he _wants_ to stop himself from killing, because he _doesn’t want_ to harm others and knows its wrong.* When Angel loses his soul, he stops caring about the morality of harming people and is happy to start killing again.

_* I am deliberately refraining from talking about empathy here because that complicates the picture too much. To me, it doesn’t matter whether a person refrains from harming others because they_ feel for _them or because they_ know _it’s wrong (the ‘golden rule’ of ‘do unto others’). You don’t necessarily have to feel another person’s pain to refrain from harming them._

Then we get Spike in seasons 4-6. Spike is a vampire—a demon—who has been gleefully killing for over 100 years. In Season 4, TPTB put a microchip in Spike’s brain that gives him pain every time he tries to harm another individual (like a shock-collar for vampires, working through basic operant conditioning). So Spike stops hurting people physically, because he can’t, but he can still scheme behind the scenes if he wants to.

[image description: Spike scheming with a Frankenstein-like monster]

Which brings us to the next stage in Spike’s development: his developing love for Buffy.

[image description: Spike loving a pretty disturbed-looking Buffy]

Here’s the thing: now, Spike has the chip, so he can’t to direct harm. He also now loves Buffy, so he doesn’t want to do any indirect harm at all to her or anyone she cares about. He wants to show her he can be a good person because _she’s_ a good person and she respects that. So Spike works hard, all through season 5, to prove to Buffy and her friends that he can be trusted and he will only work on the side of the angels. And lets be honest: he does a great job. But Spike is still a demon: he is a demon with a chip and love for a (very good) person. So he has all the incentive in the world to be good.

At this point, I want to bring in Mary again. What we have in Mary (in HLV) is not a demon—let’s drop that category—but a person whose past is characterized by demon-like behaviour: she is a remorseless killer. She may want a new start, but she justifies rather than feels regret about her career as a killer. So I’m going to take that as a given.

Mary now, like Spike, also has love. I believe she is genuinely in love with John. Here’s Spike reacting to Buffy’s death:

[Image description: Spike crying his eyes out.]

Here’s Mary reacting to John’s forgiveness:

[Image description: Mary ugly-crying, not just shedding a polite tear. (Thanks to acafanmom for this screengrab).]

Because of her love for John, just like with Spike, she is motivated to do things that John approves of because she wants to feel worthy of his love. (Note her saying to John: “you won’t love me anymore” if he reads the usb stick. She knows what she has to do to stay in John’s good graces, and she very much wants to stay on that side of the line.) _But_ , I don’t see any evidence in the show that she is motivated to do good for any inherent reason other than that. In fact, we are given evidence to the contrary: she takes out her assassin gear when she has a problem. She resorts to “old” ways. It seems like to me, given the evidence of the show, that Mary wanted out of the assassin business for reasons that have nothing to do with remorse or ethical concerns. Here’s the thing: Mary has no chip in her brain. So at this point, I actually consider her _more_ dangerous than Spike, because Spike is actually prevented from doing harm to people through that chip, while Mary is free to pack heat and to shoot someone threatening her if she so chooses.

Throughout Season 5 of Buffy, we’re meant to still be wary of Spike, even though he seems pretty harmless at this point. But if we weren’t sure about that, Season 6 makes sure we know that (n.b.: _I do not agree with the attempted rape storyline as a way of showing it, but I do agree with the idea behind the storyline_ ). In Season 6, we see Spike finding an opportune moment to further Buffy’s sense of isolation from her friends (whom she feels estranged from) and convince her to embrace her dark side:

[Image: Spike convincing Buffy to embrace her dark side in a ridiculously sexy way.]

We have a parallel to this in _Sherlock_ , too. When John finds out about Mary’s past, rather than trying to convince him that _she is not that person anymore_ , and in fact _she’s the person he’s known for the past year_ , the sweet, kind, moral Mary, she (with Sherlock acting as her mouthpiece) does what Spike does above: convinces John that he has a dark side and that he ought to embrace it.

Buffy begins to fall for this, but we see her struggling with it and resisting it. She is going through a profound crisis, and we’re meant to see it as such. In the end, it takes Spike really stepping over the line and showing his true colours in a horrible and violent way (attempted rape; I hated this storyline and I’m not going to get a pic of it). We see quite clearly that despite his chip, and despite his love, Spike has the capacity to do harm. He is still dangerous. At this point, Buffy finally realizes she has to stop flirting with darkness. She needs to draw a line and get quickly back to the other side of it. She is, and wants to be, a good person. And Spike realizes too how much he’s lost by not being a truly good person. So he goes to seek his redemption:

[Image description: Spike getting his soul back.]

In _Sherlock_ , I’d argue that Mary shooting Sherlock is essentially the equivalent of Spike’s attempted rape. She has shown, in the here and now, that she is willing to harm an innocent person in order to hold on to John because of her love for him. To me, this ought to have been a turning point in the show just like it was in BTVS: it should have taught both John and Sherlock that despite her _very real_ desire to be good for John, Mary is still dangerous to have around; she can very quickly turn from ally to threat depending on how her interests are aligned, just as Spike did.

If it didn’t, I’d argue that it’s because Sherlock, bringing John along with him, is actively flirting with extreme masochism, and the appeal of the dark side. And this is why, if I’m going to accept what’s going on at the end of HLV as _real_ , then I also need to accept it as _dark, unhealthy, and twisted_. Sherlock forgives Mary (who never once asked for forgiveness, btw), and decides that it’s a great idea to keep her around, despite _all the evidence showing that she is dangerous_. Let’s recap: she loves John, but she has no chip, and she certainly has no “soul” (in the BTVS sense of acutely distinguishing right from wrong. Whether she has the capacity to do that remains to be seen). And right now, at the end of HLV, she isn’t Season 5 Spike, she’s mid-Season 6 Spike that Buffy’s friends warn her about:

Do we know that Mary won’t hurt John if she’s not getting what she wants from him? That she won’t hurt Sherlock again if he gets in the way? That she won’t threaten other people John cares about? We don’t know that with any degree of certainty. Mary has _not_ been redeemed. And this is precisely what makes her an interesting character. I _love_ Spike, and I’m ridiculously into Spuffy. But BTVS spends an inordinate amount of time exploring the morality and “goodness” of Spuffy, and the idea that it might be unhealthy. In order for the Mary storyline on _Sherlock_ to work for me, I need the same kind of exploration in Series 4. HLV indicated that it’s _possible_ these questions will be handwaved away. If that’s true, it’s not a storyline I can follow with any enthusiasm.

***

I was writing this as one of my metas, and then acafanmom posted her meta on Mary in HLV. In sum, I have to say, I agree with almost all of what she writes. Mary is a _fascinating_ character, and I really do believe that all the emotion we see of her in HLV is genuine. Where we depart, perhaps, is in emphasis. I cannot see Mary’s shooting Sherlock as anything but extremely dark and as representing an ongoing threat. Mary may give money to a homeless guy, but Billy Kinkaid also supported lots of children’s homes. I am not able to balance morality on a scale like Sherlock does; killing and injuring innocent people will always put you on one side of the line, regardless of what else you to, I think. But it does nevertheless change your character from cardboard-cutout villain to interesting, multi-layered villain (like Hannibal). Will Mary continue to grow darker (like Hannibal?) or will she gain redemption (as salsify implied), like Spike?

It remains to be seen.





End file.
